Is It News or Is It Porn?
Published May 14, 2004
How's a girl to know?
As the Boston Herald reports with glee, the Boston Globe screwed up royally on Wednesday.
"Globe caught with pants down: Paper duped into running porn photos"By Herald staff
Thursday, May 13, 2004
The Boston Globe was reeling yesterday after graphic photos of alleged sexual abuse of Iraqi women by U.S. soldiers turned out to be staged shots from a hardcore porn Web site.
"This photo should not have appeared in the Globe," editor Martin Baron said in a statement. "First, images portrayed in the photo were overly graphic. Second, as the story clearly pointed out, those images were never authenticated as photos of prisoner abuse. There was a lapse in judgment and procedures, and we apologize for it."
The "lapse" came after City Councilor Chuck Turner and perennial pot-stirrer Sadiki Kambon called a press conference in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to display more purported abuse photos. Turner claimed they came from "a very legitimate person" but admitted they hadn't been authenticated. Kambon said he got them from a representative of the Nation of Islam. Neither Turner nor Kambon returned calls.But yesterday, WorldNetDaily.com reported the pictures - which show hard-core sex acts and genitalia - came from a pornographic site.
So the rush to be first with news — or the fear of not being in on a big story — seems to have clouded the judgment of at least three Globe editors. They printed sexually explicit photos, allegedly of sexual abuse, with no IDEA who the source of the photos was and with not an ounce of evidence to show that American soldiers or Iraqi prisoners were involved.
This is the state of "news" in our society. I have no problem with the porn, per se. I don't expect it in my newspaper, but consenting adults can do what they want and share it with the vast porn audience.
Newspapers that don't bother to research the so-called news before they make allegations against people? They bother me.
Pour yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy your morning paper.
- Is It News or Is It Porn?
- Published: May 14, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Media
- Writer: bhw
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Comments on this articleComments
Since when was Globe considered a legitimate newspaper anyway? Aren't they a tabloid? Being a tabloid, what did you expect?
It's the Boston Globe, the real newspaper in Boston. The Herald is to the Boston Globe [we locals just call it the Globe] what the NY Post is to the NY Times.
My mistake, lack of sleep seems to have made me miss your entire excerpt for some reason. You mentioned several times it was the Boston Globe. Sorry.
Yeah, but it's also referred to as just the Globe a few times, including in the Herald's headline. 8-)
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Thats really hilarious. Yesterday morning I heard about these photos on the radio, yet when I looked online for the story, nothing came up. This explains it!
I think that this story, and the fact that some of the british photos were also complete fakes shows that as a people we have to resist the urge to get heated by initial news reports. One need only look at the response to the accusations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. We have no idea of the scope of these abuses, how many soldiers were involved, the extent of the crime, how many prisoners abused. Given that, does this really justify the type of response it's been given?
I'm not saying abuse is right, but with the partisan bickering going on, and since this is an election year, the first sniff of problems and calls immediately go out for everyones resignation. It's crazy.